The Old Coot doesn’t measure up.
By Merlin Lessler
You’re 10 years old and waiting in line to get on the
roller coaster. You see the bar ahead, the one you have to be taller than, to
ride the “Monster.” Will you make it this year? You hope against hope, pulling
yourself up, to be as tall as possible, wearing work boots to give you an extra
half inch. Maybe? But, no! Not tall enough again this year.
Fast forward 50 years. It’s a different size test you
need to pass this time, not to get on a ride, but into your favorite
“all-you-can-eat” restaurant. Ham, chicken, roast beef, mac & cheese,
mashed potatoes, potatoes au gratin, vegetables (mostly going untouched), a
zillion other items and a dessert bar that could feed a small village. This
size test is not a height measurement, it’s a set of bars that measures your
girth. You’ve got to fit through them to feed from the trough. You wait. You
try. You fail. And are just as crushed as you were when you failed to make it
onto the roller coaster fifty years earlier.
A real scenario? Not yet, but it looms ahead as we evolve
into an obese society. Without it, the all-you-can-eat restaurant business will
become extinct. I think we’re safe for a while; it hasn’t come to a set of bars
at the entrance. Not yet. The airline industry is another story. They already make
us pay for our width, to buy a second ticket to get on board. We’ve gotten
bigger; the seats have gotten smaller. What a profit-making strategy. We’re on even
more of a collision course. A measurement system is all set up at the TSA
scanners. The airlines just have to convince the agents to relay measurements
to them, so they can collect the extra before we get on board.
We wonder how this has happened to us. Every year when we
went for a checkup our weight was almost the same as the previous year. Ok, maybe a pound or two more. If you do the
math, you won’t have to wonder anymore: 2 pounds per year, times 50 answers the
question of how this happened. I refuse to do the math; I know my girth is expanding
and I also know my height is shrinking. It’s just a matter of time before I’ll
be banned from both, a smorgasbord and a roller coaster ride. It ain’t as great
as you might think to be an old coot.
Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment